Slaughter makes killing. Ha ha!

A mystery writer I've never heard of named Karin Slaughter just got a "seven figure" contract for her next two books, says this Publishers Weekly article. I know that mystery writers, in addition to authors of certain screenplays and retired Presidents, are some of the few writers who are treated royally these days by the publishing world, but it impressed me that someone I never heard of, with only two books to her name, got a million bucks to write two more. I did a search on her name and came up, first, with this interview on her own website. (The so-called bio therein is a worthless paragraph-long piece of P.R.) It's fine as far as it goes, but what I really wanted to find out was, what was this woman's career arc? Has she published 62 short mystery stories before this, or did she just start tiddling her typewriter keys and hit the jackpot?

Still searching, I came up with several interviews with Slaughter, all of them more or less mystery-fan oriented, but I didn't found out what she'd done before this except for a single reference. She said she tried to write a piece of historical fiction; she refers to it as a "story" but it might have been a book or even just an idea for a book. In any case, she says her agent was not successful in selling it, and so she started writing mysteries.

That's it? Just one failed story, then unlimited success as a mystery writer? I'm not saying she isn't a talented writer. She must be, to stand out among the crowd of people writing mysteries these days. But she also seems to have been incredibly lucky for her first book to be a hit and to get a million-dollar contract based on that and the second book.